Everything the Network Touches by Tom Coates

A presentation that is as vast as James Glieck’s book The Information, Tom Coates ties networks, communications, innovation and manufacture together. My favourite line:

It took a planet to make this room

Take outs
Google indexs over 28 billion pages
Google Books holds 15 million out of an estimated 130 million books the exist
Upgrades to the web of data:

Social software – collaboratively create, make information, put things out there – Flickr

Social networks – one big data set: who you know. It isn’t valuable until the data is matched with other services

Geolocation – is a similar way of joining information from around the web to make a narrative or story

Real-time data – upgrade in efficiency and speed

Data visualisation – highlights the recombinative possiblities of the web of data (and the web-of-no-web)

Kindle’s network connectivity a la the Whispernet is transformative and reflects future networking trends
Spime – object that reports its location in space and time; makes ownership less ‘possessive’. The object can become a service – pay per use
MujiComp – a kind of Steve Jobs aesthetic with modular ubiquitous computing
Immersive web maps on to environment through buildings appliances etc rather than into a wearable computing device
Networks and data are an accelerative effect on ideas and innovation
Semantic web has led some of the work astray, though the tools and much of the work being done using the technology has been good and useful – ignores folksonomies, focuses on large search engine companies
Information follows more of an adhoc devolved distributed approach
Gaps in open data particularly in identifying non-web data: books, songs etc
Privacy being redefined – from what is hidden to what we decide it is reasonable for companies (and other organisations) to know about us